• Heini Harve, Jorma Jokela, Antti Tissari, Ari Saukko, Toni Okkolin, Ville Pettilä, and Tom Silfvast.
• The Finnish Defence Forces, Centre for Military Medicine, FIN-15701 Lahti, Finland. heini.harve@helsinki.fi
• Resuscitation. 2009 Feb 1;80(2):275-7.

Aims Of The StudyTo examine whether basic life support-defibrillation (BLS-D) training of laypersons enhances the speed of defibrillation and the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during a simulated ventricular fibrillation scenario compared with a situation where the care provider has no previous BLS-D training but receives dispatcher assistance with the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED) and the performance of CPR.MethodsFifty-two military conscripts of the Finnish Defence Forces who without previous medical education had been tested in a simulated cardiac arrest scenario with dispatcher assistance and thereafter received a 4-h BLS-D training. Six months later they were randomly divided to form teams of two and again tested in a similar scenario but without dispatcher assistance. The time interval from collapse to first shock, hands-off time and the quality of CPR were compared between the two tests.ResultsThe quality of mouth-to-mouth ventilation was better after training, but there was only a minor improvement in the quality of compressions and the speed of defibrillation.ConclusionsTraining improved the quality of mouth-to-mouth ventilation performed by laypersons but had only a minor effect on defibrillation and the quality of compressions.

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